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I just realized what I am missing… what I lost

Disclaimer: You don’t have to read this. This is for me mainly. While I wish I was drunk while writing it, I am all too sober… which makes it all the worse.

Do not read if you don’t care about how other humans feel. Do not read if you don’t like to face the reality of depression. Do not read with pity in your mind.

Last of all… do not read if you don’t want to read.

I have spent years wondering about this hollow feeling inside of me. I have come up with many possible reasons as to its existence… but I didn’t realize until tonight what was missing, what I had lost. I didn’t realize that my whole life up to now has been one great lie… a lie to myself and to everyone that ever thought they knew me.

I know now that I lost something precious years ago. I lost something that left a gaping hole in the center of who and what I am.

I Lost Me.

Yes, it sounds corny right? 31 year old veteran of 2 military services and 2 war zones coming out and saying that I lost myself? Well its true.

Years ago She showed me the joy of what I called Love. Years ago… She showed me the unrequited pain of loss. At that very point I lost myself and have been trying to explain it off as anything else. “Everyone has pain” I would say, or “it wasn’t really Love”… I would listen to people say “You are too good for her man” and I would nod on the outside. I tried to reason with myself by filling the void with different women, but each and every one of them just made the gap feel bigger and the armor I wear for all to see grow thicker. They all left me… but it was my fault. I have been self-fulfilling the feeling of pain that came when She left without a Goodbye, with just her Brother telling me that I needed to move on.

Everything I have been doing in life I have had the feeling of being on a downward spiral… and I was right. When you lose yourself there is no going back to the “good days’”. Every day is just another day to get through… and the future that I once looked forward to so hopefully is now shown to be on a road so far from me that it is unreachable.

I sit here tonight with the past parading through my head. I feel every dagger that has come against this heart, every loss that has widened the gap within… and every single ounce of the loss of who I was. The physical pain of my body, caused by pushing myself too hard to forget… to try and lose myself in the business of the military (and, by proxy, death), are nothing compared to the pain that is once again welling up from a place I have long tried to keep suppressed.

I want to apologize to every woman I have had the nerve to have feelings for since Her. It wasn’t your fault that you left me – and each one of you has given me memories, and pains, that I will bear with me forever… it was my fault for not being me I guess. Or my fault for trying to be a me that I wasn’t. In any case I am sorry – my pain is my fault and my own. I wish you happiness and Love – 2 things I no longer see on my road.

You know, I never really could define what it felt like to lose my heart to Her… but I think that is because it is impossible to explain. How can you explain the loss of something so ethereal? Picture in your head a deep dark chasm with no sound, no light, and only room enough for you to stand alone at the bottom. No view of the sky. Darkness walled on all sides, and a drain down which your hopes and dreams keep sliding… picture that and then imagine an aching wrench where your ethereal heart would be… do that and know you haven’t but pierced a small piece of it. Trying to fill the chasm inside has been like filling a sieve with water and wondering why it doesn’t stay full.

Now what do I do?

Querida… what did I do?

I used to write poems. I lost that when I lost me… but I think I understand the great poets now more than ever. I know that I will just have to face this road ahead of me as only part of who I was… until the sky falls, the seas sink, and these eyes close into that dreamless sleep – however many years it may be from now.

I guess I should be going now… I have gone beyond feeling the pain and feel completely hollow. I now get to face the rest of my life knowing that I am not me. Now you few readers have seen a true glimpse of the shell that I am. That’s more than I show myself in the mirror lately.